The worst part about working the eleven to seven shift at Wal-Mart on a Saturday night in Karo, Georgia is…

            Well, it all sucks.

            And this is where, for six dollars and fifty three cents an hour, Aubrey Wyke spends his Saturday nights. He wastes the seven hours leaning over his counter, reading that celebrity rag, and watching the winos, perverts and freaks who crawl out of their cesspools to obtain their cheap wine, R rated movies, and random baked goods.

            Tonight is slow.

            It’s usually slow.

            He’s sold five six-packs of cheap, off-brand beer to a middle aged lady, with really bad English and worse breath. He’s sold twenty five packages of adult diapers to a twenty-something in a tie. He’s sold four, two-liter sodas to a girl that looked younger than his sister. He’s sold seven shades of lip-gloss to a lady with a husky voice and large hands. And now he’s flipping through a gossip magazine, wondering who’s eyes were upside down and color inverted on page six, when a perfect, alabaster, manicured hand is suddenly in his field of vision. He tears his eyes away from the gorgeous cuticles—meticulously managed—he’s met by a pair of even grey eyes, with thin lines of pale blue radiating from the small, jet black pupil. The lovely creature clears its throat, and Aubrey notices the red pupils, track marks, and black bruises. The hand—the lovely hand—is shaking as it clutches a box of diabetic needles and a wad of small bills. There’s a small thud as the items are dropped.

            “…Er…right. That’s um…” Aubrey’s own, hideous, unkempt, pudgy hands fumble as he tries to scan the item. “Five. Um. Five…oh five. Yeah.” His voice sounds dumb.

            He glances nervously at the beautiful boy in front of him. The older kid—almost Aubrey’s age—or he looks pretty close to Aubrey’s age, that is, stares back with those stagnant, blank, macabre eyes that are indicative of too much pot-smoking, not enough sleeping, and nothing but self-interest. There’s something strangely confident and unusually charismatic in that look—it makes Aubrey’s knees weak and his throat dry. The pretty user takes his needles and carries them, bag-less, in his perfect hands, and doesn’t wait for change from the six, crumpled, stained, torn bills he left on the counter.

            There’s something slightly devious about coming home at seven-thirty in the morning on a Sunday.

            Or, there would be, if Aubrey had been doing something illicit.

            Instead, coming home from a shift at Wal-Mart, it just kind of hurts.

            There’s nothing on cable worth watching at eight-fifteen in them morning. Aubrey finally settles on a local news channel and lies down on the couch and wakes up three and a half hours later, still in his work uniform, to the sound of his phone vibrating. Without checking the message, he simply turns the phone on silent and goes back to sleep. Almost four hours after that, he wakes up with a pain in his chest—he suddenly can’t breathe. He opens his eyes, and sneezes. His mother’s obese, white cat is curled up on his chest. As his eyes focus, he looks for the remote. The newscaster is a pretty, petite Latino woman with a very grave tone. She’s talking about some football player who died doing something stupid. He lived in…

            …Kairo.

            Aubrey stops groping under the couch for the remote and stares at the television.

            “Elliot Kilpatrick was an eighteen year old, recent graduate of Thomas Bragg High School. He was an avid sportsmen, who played football, soccer and lacrosse. He died as a result of a drunken car crash. His best friend, Benjamin Needs-A-Good-Last-Name, the driver, was severely intoxicated and Elliot was not wearing his seat. It is unclear whether or not Elliot had been drinking. His parents say he’d already been accepted to Auburn University on a football related scholarship.”

            At fifteen, having a date to the Homecoming is the most important thing in the world—and Aubrey didn’t care if he failed his Biology class—which he spent staring at the one guy he would love to go to Homecoming with—Elliot Kilpatrick.

            Elliot was a sophomore, junior varsity football player. He had a brilliant smile—not only because of his freakishly immaculate teeth, but because he was one of those few high school football players who was actually capable of thinking for himself—and that spark of real intellect was most apparent in his striking green eyes when he smiled. He was also one of those rare football players who was generally, kind-of amiable.

            And so, Aubrey somehow managed to convince himself that there was the tiniest chance that Elliot would actually say “Yes!” when Aubrey asked him to go to Homecoming. Or, at least, there was a good chance that Elliot would turn him down in a way that was articulate, kind and (a little bit) supportive. If he’d realized that Elliot was going to punch him in the face and call him names, he probably would have asked a girl, or spent Homecoming at home, in the safety of his parent’s living room.

             Somehow, at seventeen, about to enter his senior year at Thomas Bragg, Aubrey couldn’t quite bring himself to feel bad for Elliot.

            That’s not true.
           

            Maybe it was just the complete shock of someone who made his life miserable for the past three years—someone who beat him up and convinced his friends to beat him up, in addition to telling nearly the whole school that he was a “fairy”—yet also someone Aubrey couldn’t help but still pine after, wondering what things would have been like if Elliot had said “Yes!” or at least agreed to stay friends—acquaintances—suddenly being gone, maybe all that just left Aubrey feeling a little numb—confused—unsure of how he felt. It’s not really as if it mattered, even if Aubrey knew how he felt, because his feelings were not relevant, at all. He and Elliot were not boyfriends, friends, or even “on good terms.”

            Aubrey worked the night of Elliot’s funeral, wondering what would have happened if he had showed up, but wondering more at how creepy it was that he not only remembered the date of his funeral, but was wasting his time wondering whether or not he should have gone. He checked out the same assortment of creeps, potheads and weirdos, but took less interest in speculating about why they bought whatever they bought. He still flipped through a worthless celebrity rag, this time paying even less attention to the cheesy articles and confusing fashion advice than he usually did. He stopped looking out for, as he had for the past week or so, the pretty kid who bought the needles—he hadn’t come in before or since that night, as far as Aubrey knew. And he was probably dead already—overdosed or stabbed or something equally fitting of some, (probably) homeless guy.

            He drove home so distractedly that if there had been anyone else out at seven in the morning in the sleepy little town, he surely would have been the cause of an accident. Instead of sleeping out on the couch, he collapsed in his own bed.

            When he woke up, it was dark. He groggily tried to guess the time as he fished through his pockets, looking for his cell phone. He heard an unusual scrapping noise, at his window. It was probably a tree branch. Or a bird. He glanced at the curtain, and for a second, he thought he saw a dark, human-like shadow. He laughed, and pulled away the curtain, to prove to himself that he was seeing some kind of trick-of-the-light.

            He blinked several times, and then screamed. A high pitched, terrified screech.

            The creature outside his window was about the size and shape of a grown man, but with leathery, ripped, torn, gashed, bruised and bloodied skin. It had brilliant green irises, surrounded by red and grey sclera. Its nose was almost gone. Its fingers were bones. And it smashed through Aubrey’s bedroom window—with it’s head.

            It moved surprisingly slowly, but Aubrey couldn’t feel his legs, and was somehow rooted to the spot by terror, confusion and curiosity.

            The creature bridged the distance between them quickly—Aubrey’s room was small—and for a few minutes, they stared at each other, brows furrowed, faint signs of recognition passing between them. Aubrey wrinkled his nose. The creature smelled musty and sour—almost to the point of smelling sweat. Then, the creature, with an unearthly moan, wrapped it’s fingers around Aubrey’s neck and tightened their grip. Aubrey kicked, and squirmed, and the two of them fell to the ground. They wrestled, and eventually ended up, with Aubrey straddling the creatures’ hips and pinning it’s hands to the carpet. The ever eloquent Aubrey found his voice screamed something like “What the fucking fuck shit!?” The creature grunted and it’s upper lip curled into…a smile? For a split second, Aubrey thought he saw…through the torn, tattered and rotten face…

            “Elliot…?”

            His voice was an awed whisper. The creature canted his head, and nodded slightly, unsure.